Why Coldplay Sucks

There was a time when my favorite thing about January of any given year was coming up with my top music list for the previous year.  I’d spend November and December gathering all the music I’d gotten in that year together so I could properly evaluate it.  I’d then create a rubric that attempted to create an unassailable set of criteria for musical evaluation and make sure that I never, ever had another year like 2004.

See, in 2004 Green Day’s American Idiot came out, as did Local H’s Whatever Happened to PJ Soles?  I rated American Idiot as number one for the year, which isn’t a terrible choice.  I then put PJ Soles as number four, behind Velvet Revolver’s Contraband and Collective Soul’s Youth.  Within three months I knew I’d screwed that one up.  (If this sounds familiar, I’ve probably written about it four times on this blog.  At least.)

Some time not so long after I made that list I stopped listening to Youth.  Shortly after that I stopped acknowledging the existence of Velvet Revolver.  Then I figured out that RCPM had put out Americano that year and…well…after that came the increasingly insane rubrics.  This appears to have resulted in improvement.  Although the next two years are admittedly fuzzy.

See, I don’t know what my list looked like at all in 2005 and then I have a strange partial list for 2006.  It’s got my Top 10 songs and albums 4-10 on my Top 10, which is odd.  Albums 4-6 are Roddy Woomble’s solo project, My Secret is My Silence, Pearl Jam’s self-titled, and the Lost Immigrants’ …Waiting on Judgment Day.  Since the Saw Doctors’ The Cure is down at number 8, that means that the Top 3 had to be some combination of the Lovehammer’s (kinda) self-titled, Audioslave’s Revelations, and Live’s Songs from Black Mountain.  That’s not terrible.  I still actually listen to all of those albums (rounding out the list are an album that shall not be named at 7, The Elms’ Chess Hotel at 9 -- which certainly should have been kicked up a couple rungs -- and Pat Green’s Cannonball at 10, probably because I liked one song off that album and it otherwise would have been a Top 9 list) -- or at least a song or two off of them -- on a regular basis.

I actually did pretty well for 2007.  This is the Top 10:

10. Chris Cornell, Carry On
9.  Collective Soul, Afterwords
8.  Jimmy Eat World, Chase this Light
7.  The Waterboys, Book of Lightning
6.  The Fratellis, Costello Music
5.  The Nightwatchman, One Man Revolution
4.  Matt Nathanson, Some Mad Hope
3.  The Alternate Routes, Good and Reckless and True
2.  RCPM, No More Beautiful World
1.  Idlewild, Make Another World

Basically all I’d have to do is knock ol’ Tom Morello down to 7 and the list would be fine today.

After that, well, I don’t seem to have bothered to make a list for 2008.  This kind of surprises me, as I distinctly remember not making one in 2009 because it wasn’t worth it but I thought that was the first year I didn’t care.  The only albums I can think of from 2009 were the Lovehammers’ Heavy Crown, Idlewild’s Post Electric Blues, Mike Doughty’s[1] Sad Man, Happy Man, Pearl Jam’s Back Spacer, Our Lady Peace’s Burn Burn, and The Alternate Routes’ A Sucker’s Dream.[2]

Compared to 2010, though, 2009 was a bumper crop of fantastic music.  I’ve ended up dividing the music of 2010 in to four broad categories: music I couldn’t be arsed to care about, music I thought I cared about but haven’t gotten around to buying, music I keep thinking came out in 2009, and the music of Scott Lucas & the Married Men, the only time I can think of that a solo project required a guy to assemble a band three times the size of his usual project.  Crazy, right?

Either way, this is my Top 10 album list for 2010:

1.  Scott Lucas & the Married Men, George Lassos the Moon
2.  The Lost Immigrants, Pasaporte
3.  The Saw Doctors, The Further Adventures of…
4.  Scott Lucas & the Married Men, The Absolute Beginners EP
5.  The Criminal Kind, Self-Titled EP
6.  Local H, Local H’s Awesome Mix Tape #1 (…yeah…it’s a collection of covers and I only like 2 songs)

And…yeah.   For those keeping track at home, that’s a collection of 6 album…ish things.  Three of them are EPs.  Three of them involve Scott Lucas.  One of them is by a band that I’m pretty sure doesn’t actually exist anymore.  It, too, is an EP.  One is a collection of covers that I don’t actually like any more.

Now, this should take nothing away from George Lassos the Moon or Pasaporte (or, for that matter, The Absolute Beginners EP.  Holy crap do I love the cover of Bowie’s “Absolute Beginners” and the Married Men take on Local H’s “Hey, Rita.”  It’s really quite brilliant).  GLtM will probably go down as one of my best albums all-time.  Pasaporte is a totally solid album that’s at least as good as …Waiting on Judgment Day.  The Further Adventures of is okay as far as Saw Doctors studio albums go, but what I’ve realized is that The Saw Doctors are very much an Irish Pearl Jam.  I pretty much only listen to Live at the Melody Tent and Live in Galway, I’ve loved the three or four live shows I’ve seen, and I like their studio stuff but can’t really be bothered to listen to it too often.[4]

Since there’s not much worth talking about in terms of the music of 2010, I’ve decided instead to try to figure out why Coldplay sucks so very, very much.  This may seem like an odd thing to do, but Pandora has decided that I must like Coldplay, since I also have been known to indicate an appreciation for such bands as Oasis, U2, the Saw Doctors, The Waterboys, Idlewild, and The Verve.  So it says, “Hey, you like all this, you must like Coldplay, right?”

Fuck, no.  I mean, really.  No.  Not at all. 

It’s all the more mysterious when you consider that I once liked Coldplay.  I own Parachutes, A Rush of Blood to the Head, and the 2003 live disc.[5]  They somehow managed to make it on to my mp3 player.  Which was actually kind of nice, since it made trying to answer the question, “What was there to like about Coldplay back in the day?” that much easier.  Specifically because I didn’t have to, y’know, find the albums.

Anyway, Pandora threw a song from the one album with the wannabe French Revolution artwork at me the other day.  I think it’s called Viva la Vida.  Also, I’m pretty sure the song was the title track, as I vaguely recognized it from somewhere.  While it was plodding along for a while and I was thinking, “Seriously?  What is this crap?” it suddenly occurred to me what the deal with Coldplay is.

See, they’re most often compared to U2 and Oasis due to, well, national and temporal proximity.  Since U2 was, shall we say, past their prime by the time Coldplay showed up and Oasis was busy imploding in the post-Standing on the Shoulders of Giants world, everyone was like, “Yay!  New Britpop!” and yea, verily, Coldplay was crowned king without anyone noticing that they, well, pretty much sucked.

The problem is simple.  Coldplay is U2 without the anthemic, stadium-filling feeling of, well, U2.  Coldplay is Oasis without the hooks and the swagger.  Basically, Coldplay is an amalgamation of all of the things that made U2 and Oasis good without any of the things that made either bad great.  Yet they still have the desire to do the things that Oasis and U2 do.  Coldplay has pretension of world-changing rock without having anything to say.  They attempt to write big, epic, hubris-fueled songs without understanding what makes an epic song awesome.  So, instead, the music of Coldplay is just a joyless – if technically proficient – slog through songs that just kind of listlessly plod along for a while and then eventually, mercifully, end.  The end result is rather painful.

There’s more to an epic song than making it long, tossing in a lot of instruments, and filling it with pseudo-intellectual lyrics.  An epic song requires three things: presence, timelessness, and emotional force.  If done right, an epic song doesn’t need to be complicated at all.  It just needs to grab your attention, hold it, and then remind you of that moment every time you hear it.[6]

It’s blatantly obvious, at least to me, that Coldplay attempted to make A Rush of Blood to the Head an album of epic songs.  The fact is, that they very nearly achieved it with “The Scientist” and “Amsterdam.”  Everything is there with both of those songs.  But both songs fall short for the same exact reason that every Coldplay song falls short: they’re too long, they’re too boring, and they’re ultimately flat and lifeless.

Now, this is an admittedly subjective yardstick, but I need a point of comparison.  Since we’re talking Oasis and U2 the natural reaction is to say, “Well if Coldplay does this, what do we compare it to with Oasis and U2?”  For this I must pull out two decidedly unfair comparisons: Be Here Now and The Joshua Tree.  I actually originally wanted to use Achtung, Baby, but The Joshua Tree is a much better album for comparison purposes due mostly to mood.  On the Oasis end I could actually probably use (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? or The Masterplan, but Be Here Now is also the closest comparison.

The Joshua Tree is an album of epic songs.  This is not at all marred by the fact that I inexplicably despise “Where the Streets Have No Name.”  I just start on “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking for” and go from there.  The fascinating thing about The Joshua Tree, at least to me, is that the most amazing song in an album that includes “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking for,” “With or Without You,” “Bullet the Blue Sky,” and “One Tree Hill” is the quietest and the simplest.  It’s a song that I actually tend to forget about if I haven’t listened to the album in a while.  But every time “Running to Stand Still” comes on I think about pretty much nothing else for four and a half minutes.  The song builds a space and it holds you there.

I can’t help but compare Coldplay’s “Amsterdam” to “Running to Stand Still.”  Both spend most of their run quiet and simple.  Both build up for a bit and taper off without ever getting particularly grandiose.  “Running to Stand Still” never gets around to insisting upon itself quite like “Amsterdam” does, though.  It never gets as loud, never gets as complicated.  It also never makes me want to go listen to a different song.  “Amsterdam” is a five and a half minute song that feels like it goes on for about ten.  “Running to Stand Still” is a quiet four and a half minute song that feels like something much longer and much bigger.  This, as much as the standard definition, is what I mean by “timelessness.”

This is a key aspect of the epic song.  It can be short or long, it doesn’t matter.  The song exists in a place where time does not matter.  When it’s over it comes as a surprise either that ten minutes have passed so quickly or that only four minutes went by.

On that note, then, we have the collection of super-sized songs known as Be Here Now.  The song that jumps out on that album, though, is “Fade In-Out.”  It comes in at just under seven minutes, but doesn’t feel like a seven minute song.  What it actually feels like is several smaller songs built on the same sonic theme and then kinda pasted on top of each other and attached to a seven minute guitar line.  It’s big, it’s complicated, it draws attention to itself, and it does so beautifully.  They did the same basic thing with “Champagne Supernova” and it worked just as well.

Coldplay basically attempted that with “The Scientist,” which is also a song that makes me ask the question, “What the fuck does this have to do with science?”  Nothing.  The answer is nothing.  But “The Scientist” never really goes anywhere, either.  And while it’s two minutes shorter than “Fade In-Out,” it’s an interminable five minutes.

I’m tempted to blame all of this on the band’s over-reliance on the piano.  The piano is not an epic instrument.  Don’t get me wrong, I love the piano.  It’s just not the instrument you build a rock band around.  Consider the two big pop stars who played piano from the last decade: Norah Jones and Vanessa Carlton.  Think about it.  No, YOU think about it.

Then “A Rush of Blood to the Head” comes on.  It’s basically “The Scientist,” but with the piano pushed to the background and an additional forty seconds.  I was just listening to it for my own edification and at about the four minute mark I thought, “Wait, am I still listening to this?”  That, right there, is the exact opposite of epic.  That’s epic fail right there.  As such, the problems with Coldplay are systemic in the band itself.

What it all comes down to is a moment that was recorded in the 2003 live album.  At the start of “Yellow,” which was Coldplay’s big, breakthrough song, Chris Martin tells the crowd, “There’s no reason to be sitting down during this song.”  He then tells them, “We’ll buy you all an ice cream if you stand up.”  This is supposedly the biggest band in Britain since U2 and Oasis and the lead singer is telling the crowd that he’ll buy them ice cream if they stand up during the big hit from the debut album.

Think about that.  In 2000 Coldplay released Parachutes.  In 2002 they released A Rush of Blood to the Head.  In 2003 Chris Martin offered a crowd ice cream to stand up during a show.  In 1994 Oasis released Definitely Maybe.  In 1995 they released (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?  In 1996 they said they were bigger than the Beatles (and, incidentally, Morning Glory did outsell Sgt. Peppers, so in terms of single-album sales, they were).  And let’s not forget that Bono had been wandering the world and meeting with governmental and religious leaders to try to end Third World debt for a good four years by the time Chris Martin discovered he couldn’t even get people to stand up at a Coldplay show.

So why does Coldplay suck?  That question is actually surprisingly easy to answer.  They have boring songs, a less-than-charismatic front man, and they just, in general, lack presence.  But plenty of bands are like that.  So perhaps that’s the wrong question to ask.

The real question is, “Why does it matter that Coldplay sucks?”  The answer is, “It shouldn’t.”  But it does because the music industry was desperate to find a new band to plug in to a gap that U2 and Oasis weren’t exactly filling any more.  But U2 and Oasis possessed those intangibles that create greatness.  Coldplay never did and never will.  Simply anointing them the next big thing on the British music scene was never going to change that, either.

Such are the vagaries of life, I suppose.  It certainly worked out in the end for Coldplay.  I mean, Chris Martin married Gwyneth Paltrow, is buddies with Simon Pegg, and has a daughter named after a fruit, after all.  Also, he probably spends his nights sleeping next to Gwyneth Paltrow on a giant pile of money.

See, it doesn’t matter that Coldplay sucks in the one place that the music industry cares about most: the wallet.

-----------------------

[1]Doughty’s All Music entry amuses me every time I see it, since it begins thusly: “Before emerging as a solo artist, Mike Doughty (known as Mike Doughty during the early stages of his career) was best known as the frontman of the unique avant-garde group Soul Coughing.”  I think that’s supposed to say he was known as “M. Doughty” during the early stages of his career…

[2]2008 isn’t much different.  All I can think of from that year was Local H’s 12 Angry Months, RCPM’s Turbo Ocho, Mike Doughty’s Golden Delicious, The Fratellis’ Here We Stand, Flogging Molly’s Float, The Verve’s Forth, and Glasvegas’s um, self-titled EP with some extra tracks thrown on to make a quick buck after they got critically-acclaimed in England.  Then there was Seneca’s Sweeter than Bourbon, but I didn’t know about them until 2009, so I think I made that an honorary 2009 album.  Not that it matters, since I didn’t make a 2009 best of, anyway.  Either way, the point is, if I combined 2008 and 2009, I’d have a Top 13 list.  Although it would at least be interesting.  I think it would go 12 Angry Months, Post Electric Blues, Turbo Ocho, Sad Man, Happy Man, Float, Sweeter than Bourbon,[3] Golden Delicious, Here We Stand, Heavy Crown, Forth, Burn Burn, Back Spacer, A Sucker’s Dream.

Yeah.  I mean, admittedly I do still listen to, like, 9 of those albums on a regular basis.  But ask how many albums I still listen to from 1994, 1995, or 1996.  I dare you.

[3]Next time I run in to Seneca I’m going to buy them all a shot of Woodford Reserve.  Then when they’ve thrown their shots back I’ll say, “You know what’s sweeter than bourbon?  Everything!”

[4]This actually leads to an odd situation.  The rules of my Top 10 include two simple and important exceptions: no live albums and no best of albums.  Period.  The Saw Doctors are one of my top 5 bands, yet my two favorite albums by them are live albums, while I’m pretty sure my number three is Play it Again, Sham!, which is basically a first half of the career retrospective.  Ergo, one of my all-time favorite bands has an album that I put at number 8 that should really be revised to number 6 or so in 2006 and an album that made number three pretty much by default this year.  Villains, which I consider to be their best studio effort, came out in 2002 while I didn’t know about the band until 2005 or so.  Still, in a re-do of 2002 that means it would go up against Idlewild’s The Remote Part, Audioslave’s self-titled, RCPM’s Sonoran Hope & Madness, and Local H’s Here Comes the Zoo.  Some poking around has also revealed that was the year of Our Lady Peace’s Gravity, Flogging Molly’s Drunken Lullabies, and Richard Ashcroft’s Human Conditions, so Villains wouldn’t make Top 3 and would probably come in at number 6.  There are, however, seven albums that I can remember liking from 2002 that I would immediately and unequivocally say aren’t as good as Villains.  The first six are DMB’s Busted Stuff, Oasis’s Heathen Chemistry, The Transplants’ self-titled, Matchbox 20’s More than You Think You Are, Unwritten Law’s Elva, and the Mighty Mighty Bosstones’ A Jackknife to a Swan.  The other is Coldplay’s A Rush of Blood to the Head.  And considering the name of this post…well…

Considering the fact that I found out about Idlewild, RCPM, The Saw Doctors, Flogging Molly, and Ashcroft’s solo stuff after the year 2002 (and, really, it wasn’t until a couple of years ago that I realized The Verve’s Urban Hymns was, like, really good and, hey, look, solo stuff!), I’m now pretty much convinced that, holy shit, I listened to some terrible music in 2002.  I mean, you take those four away and we’re looking at a Top 10 for the year that drops off pretty fast after 3 and falls off a cliff after about 6.  And I know that I was pretty enthusiastic about way more albums.  My best guess is that it involved a lot of bad country and Christian music.  Because I know I didn’t (and don’t) dig Beck’s Sea Change or the Counting Crows’ Hard Candy, that’s for damn sure.  And I didn’t care at all about the Foo Fighters’ One By One, but I can’t actually figure out why.  But the weird thing about that is I can find a lot of stuff from 2001 or 2003 that I’m assuming I liked at the time while nothing really pops for 2002.  Was it just an absolutely terrible year for music or something?  Was I totally prepped about the Goo Goo Dolls’ Gutterflower and I’ve just blocked that out of my mind?  Inquiring minds want to know (but, like, not really, because…yech).

Also, I fear I probably did like Gutterflower.  And I’ve been intentionally ignoring Pearl Jam’s Riot Act, as this was before my Pearl Jam renaissance and Riot Act sucks, anyway.

It also occurs to me that I should probably never be given a working time machine.  All I would ever do is use it to engage in hilariously mundane activities.  To wit:

I’d meet myself in November of 2002 with a stack of CDs.  It would include Villains, The Remote Part, Sonoran Hope & Madness, Drunken Lullabies, Human Conditions, One By One, and Mike Doughty’s Smofe + Smang (which doesn’t count for the Top 10 due to liveness, but holy crap, awesome).  I would then say, “This is what you should have been listening to all year.  You’ll thank me later.  By which I mean you’ll thank you later.  I mean, I’ll thank me later.  I mean…just listen, jackass.”

I’d show up at about the time I decided, “Meh, I’ve lost enough weight, now I never have to do this being healthy thing again,” in the fall of 2004, hold up a picture of myself in the fall of 2009 and say, “Yeah…think again.”

I’d show up at the exact moment I realized that nothing was ever going to happen with Her.  I’d then say, “That epiphany you just had?  Go with it.  It’s also way better than what you’ll decide to do tomorrow by a wide margin.  She just wants to be friends, so go with it and your life will be about 1000% less miserable.  Trust me.”

And, yes.  These are the first three things that come to mind.  Kill Hitler?  Nah.  Give myself a set of winning Lottery numbers?  I’m good.  But when it comes to re-doing music lists from 8 years ago, I’m on it.  I obviously have my priorities in order.

[5]As much as I like All Music as a general resource, I’ve learned not to trust anything its writers actually say about music.  This is from the entry on the Coldplay live album:  “The meticulous production of the dozen-song set list itself is exemplary of the band's first two efforts; therefore doing a live album such as this proves Coldplay's brilliance. From the sonic richness of B-side ‘One I Love’ to the band's more merry singles like ‘Yellow’ and ‘Clocks,’ Live 2003 is a delightful listening experience.”  The fuck does that mean?  Also, since when does the word “merry” belong in a positive correlation with “Yellow?”  Unless we’re going with the archaic definition that basically means, “giving pleasure” and, as such, the person is just saying, “Hey, I like that song.”  Also, “Clocks” sucks.  And I’m pretty sure I would have said that in 2002.  And, yes, I looked up the word “merry” to make sure I wasn’t taking crazy pills.  But, really, I’m pretty sure that if Chris Martin started writing Christmas carols Santa would end up committing suicide.

[6]By this definition, the most epic song ever in my book is Soundgarden’s “Black Hole Sun.”  I remember everything about the first time I heard it.  I can say that it literally changed my life.  My musical tastes before “Black Hole Sun” pretty much involved random Christian garbage and the oldies so loved by my mother.  The very first time I heard “Black Hole Sun” my response was, “I didn’t know music could do that.”  From that moment I was hooked.  As such, Soundgarden will always be the greatest band ever in my book, Superunknown the greatest album, and “Black Hole Sun” the greatest song.  No arguments.

 

[EDIT:  It is October 12, 2011 and I am officially closing down comments on this post.  Why?  Because every once in a while a butthurt Coldplay fan with zero reading comprehension pops up, attempts to defend the band, and mostly just annoys me.  No, seriously.  Go read the comments.  I think Coldplay sucks.  I think Coldplay gets way more cred than they deserve.  I think that if you're listening to Coldplay you could instead go listen to Oasis, U2, The Waterboys, the Saw Doctors, Idlewild, The Verve, or, really, about a dozen other bands from the British Isles and be a much less lame individual.  I am also some random dude on the internet.  If my opinion of Coldplay matters that much to you, you really need to go re-evaluate your life.]

Comments

[Fake Al Gore]

I'm so happy to know that I'm not the only Jimmy Eat World and Our Lady Peace fan in the whole universe. Also, welcome back.

[Big A]

In my opinion, any top X album of 2010 isn't complete without James Blunt's "Some Kind of Trouble".

[Big A]

ARRRGH. I hate TypePad commenting!

[Geds]

Fake:

Heck, yeah, I love me some Jimmy Eat World and Our Lady Peace. Bleed American and Futures both do well in my all-time albums list, as do Spiritual Machines, Gravity, and Healthy in Paranoid Times. Jimmy Eat World actually did release a new album in 2010, but it fit under that, "Meh, I don't really feel like it," category. The stuff I heard on Pandora was underwhelming at best, and I found Chase this Light disappointing, so I wasn't predisposed to care too much. Also on the list of bands that I know released new stuff: Manic Street Preachers, Gin Blossoms, and...um...someone else. Bad Religion?

And I didn't technically go anywhere. I just didn't have anything worth saying in blog form. I actually made three tries at one of those obligatory year in review posts, but I couldn't make them not suck so I didn't finish.

Big A:

Ha! James Blunt aspires to, "Couldn't be arsed to care," status. Eat it!

Also, I had to sign in to comment even though I came to the comment string through my Dashboard. Yeah...

[Big A]

That's because you continue to stoutly refuse to acknowledge the profound genius that is James Blunt.

Plus, he's tangentially relevant to Coldplay, as he was forced to tour with them by their label in an obvious desperate attempt to force extra fame on him and force extra credibility on Coldplay.

It was like that time Black Eyed Peas opened for U2...

As to other standout albums of the year, I only just now became aware of the Jimmy Eat World and Gin Blossom albums. I will be reviewing them shortly.

For the record, Bad Religion did release a new album this year. I didn't pay attention to it for the same reason I suspect you didn't pay attention to it: we own The Empire Strikes First, which is the Cipher album for all future and past Bad Religion, making any further purchasing/listening redundant and unnecessary.

I also forgot to include the addition of Passenger's "Fairytales and Firesides" as a top pick for me this year. Then again, Passenger is so consistently good they're one of the few bands I'll give money to simply for the vague promise of an album down the line, so their sophomore album's solidity should come as no surprise.

I also have to throw out an honorable mention for The Script's "Science and Faith".

And since I'm adding my own crap for the hell of it, I want to put out a massive DIShonorable mention for the Goo Goo Dolls' "Something for the Rest of Us" which is easily the worst album they've ever produced and a massive disappointment given that I had been foolishly tricked into believing the mediocrity of "Gutterflower" was a fluke after "Let Love In" was released.

[Geds]

You know who else was a profoundly unrecognized artistic genius? Hitler!

[The Everlasting Dave]

This is one of my favorite posts you've ever done. I remember one time you came over, like, "I got the Coldplay live DVD!" and I just thought, this doesn't strike me as a good thing. I don't think I like Coldplay. Still and all, I will defend both "Clocks" and "Amsterdam" as awesomeness that transcends the band's blandness. There's some stuff from "Parachutes" that isn't half bad either. But when they're the best example of a massive rock band from a country famous for massive rock bands...

I'm actually pretty sure I can find your top 10's from 2006, and maybe even before that, since we used to email that crap back and forth all the time. /Goes to look... I knew this would come in handy some day. After I post this comment I'll check for more recent ones, but here's a bit of a retrospective:

1998: We both liked "Pack up the Cats", but I ignored Yield and you hadn't really figured out other good bands, either. Funny stuff from your top 10 songs: Two Dave Matthews songs in the top two spots, a song each for BNL, Everclear, Fastball, Matchbox 20, Diamond Rio, and The Offsping. To your credit, 3 MC's and One DJ and Motorcycle Driveby were both in your top 5. My list was similarly awful- I see your 3EB and Matchbox 20 and raise you an Eagle Eye Cherry, Semisonic, and The New Radicals. Fastball took the top spot for me.

1999: What were you even listening to? Christian? I don't recognize half the bands on your list. Caedmon's Call, Kepanogreen, This is This, Bebo Norman... I hate to bring your integrity into question, but these all sound made up. You did have LFO's "Summer Girls", though. Fine work. My list was heavy on Lit, 2 Skinnee J's and Blink 182. If that isn't bad enough I also had Len's "Steal My Sunshine" in the top 5.

2000: You had Sting's Desert Rose on yours. (Awkward pause) I had mostly stuff I still listen to today. Goldfinger, RHCP, Nina Gordon. I'm not even too sad to have "Break Stuff" by Limp Bizkit on mine. IT'S JUST ONE A THOSE DAYS!

2001: You made up a few more people. People called Cyndi Thompson, Jane Monheit, Lara Fabian, and Afro-Celt Sound System. That's cool, I make up chicks too. My top 10 was very pop. The Calling, Jewel, Everclear, Train, U2, DMB. The rockin'est song on my list was Fat Lip by Sum 41, which was my number one. Not proud of this one.

I've got mine for the next three years too, but not yours, so I'll spare people the sight of it. You're right though, 02-03 were weak years for rock and roll. I don't do the retroactive lists as much anymore, because it isn't like a final word or anything on what the best stuff was at the time. It's just your current tastes applied to an arbitrary 12-month time frame. Since I was unaware of Alkaline Trio, my 2000 list is bereft of at least five songs that would make it today, but The Everlasting Dave would not have reacted to "Trucks and Trains" at age 18 the way he did at 25-26. What matters is that I remember why I liked Goldfinger and Everclear and so forth.

[The Everlasting Dave]

The only one I could find in my email was 2006, but that was the one you mentioned anyway. Here you go:

Your 2006 songs from 10 to 1: Lovehammers "Trees", Audioslave "Broken City", Roddy Woomble "Waverly Steps", "Snakes on a Plane" theme, Lost Immigrants "Evangeline", Pearl Jam "Gone", Audioslave "Sound of a Gun", Lovehammers "Straight as an Arrow", Saw Doctors "Wisdom of Youth", Pearl Jam "Inside Job".
Your top 10 albums, the same way: Pat Green, The Elms, Saw Doctors, Keith Urban, Lost Immigrants, Pearl Jam, Live, Audioslave, Roddy Woomble, Lovehammers.
My own lists for this year were dominated by NOFX, The Saw Doctors, and The Lemonheads. "The Cure" is by far the best Saw Doctors studio album, "Wolves in Wolves' Clothing" just might be my favorite NOFX album, and The Lemonheads' self-titled was phenomenal. I didn't give Lovehammers enough credit, but I don't think their album quite stacks up to those three anyway.

[Geds]

Goddammit. Fucking internet and its inability to let the past stay in the past.

I have to tell you, I am *this close* to dropping the ban hammer on you just for bringing all of this in to the light.

On another note, I just realized that this probably is the biggest skeleton in my closet. My youth was, indeed, tragically un-misspent. But, no, I didn't make any of that shit up. It was mostly from my days of listening to terrible pop country and Christian. I really, really need to invent a time machine, go back to 1998 or so, and smack the crap out of me. I deserve at least that much.

[The Everlasting Dave]

Aw come on, you didn't enjoy that trip down memory lane? Wait, neither did I. I've made a huge mistake. At least I didn't mention the fact that I paid money for a Savage Garden CD at some point in the late '90s. Phew. That was a close one.

[Geds]

Oooh, oooh, was it the self-titled debut with "Truly Madly Deeply" on it? Because I never, ever owned that.

And you did remind me that I need to break out my old Beastie Boys again, so there's that...

Also, I'm really surprised that Train's Drops of Jupiter doesn't show up anywhere in the places where you lay my soul bare. I remember loving that album for some reason. Or at least the title track.

[Big A]

Fuck all y'all haters, I still listen to my copy of "Affirmation" from time to time :P

[The Everlasting Dave]

I didn't bother mentioning Drops of Jupiter because, despite the fact that the lead singer lives in a cave high atop Mount Crumpet overlooking Whoville, I like that song a lot. It made my terrible 2001 top 10 list. And of course, the Savage Garden was the one with "To the Moon and Back", "I Want You", and "Truly Madly Deeply". Every now and then "I Want You" gets stuck in my head and I find out I still know all the words. It's tremendous.

Big A, two questions: What is "Affirmation", and what does "Bad Religion's cipher album" mean? Cause I rather like "Empire" and now I don't know if that makes me less cool or not.

[Geds]

Weirdly, I can answer both of those questions. One because of a deeply unfortunate journey to All Music this afternoon, one because Big A and I have had this conversation.

Affirmation was Savage Garden's 1999 album. Yeah. They had more than one.

If you own The Empire Strikes First you don't need to own any other Bad Religion albums. It contains everything that Bad Religion does and it contains the best examples thereof. It's kind of like if you have Rancid's And Out Come the Wolves you can pretty much avoid buying the rest of the library. Or if you've heard RCPM's "I Don't Need Another Thrill" you've also heard "Maybe We Should Fall in Love."

[The Everlasting Dave]

Tell me you did not just besmirch the good name of "Life Won't Wait". Yeah, "Wolves" is the best, but by no means should anyone stop at just the one album when "Let's Go" and "LWW" have so goddamn much to offer. I love the cipher album concept, though. A few others that popped into my head when I read that: Beck "Odelay", OLP "Spiritual Machines", Refreshments "FFB&B"*. A month ago I would have included "Make Another World", but my "Warnings/Promises" kick has shown me the error of my ways.

*: FFB&B also renders the entire Peacemakers catalog unnecessary. Not that it isn't awesome, but if you have FFB&B you don't really get anything new out of even the best Peacemakers record. Also, [Fiat] said the same thing about "Thrill" and "Maybe", but if that's so, then why do I love "Thrill" so much, yet am completely meh on "Maybe"? I don't think they're the same song at all.

[Fake Al Gore]

My wife and I were thinking about the best albums of 2010, and we both decided B.o.B's "B.o.B Presents: The Adventures of Bobby Ray" was our pick for best album this year. Eminem is somewhere in the top ten, but we couldn't decide where.

I really liked Kanye West's "My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy," and it's easily his best album. Honestly, though, I can't think of too many albums I liked this year. Most of the ones I keep wanting to put in my list were released in late 2009, so I have to include some filler.

Let's see... I Fight Dragon's new EP "Welcome to the Breakdown" was pretty good. "Cool Is Just a Number" was better (mainly because they still had Laura Trainor in the group), but again, we're running out of good stuff. Sara Bareilles' "Kaleidoscope Heart" was nice, but most of the songs sounded the pretty similar to each other and to her previous album. I include Pink's "Great Hits... So Far!" only because I really liked "Funhouse" and this compilation has quite a few of those songs on it.

Yeah, I can see why you're all having a hard time coming up with a good list for 2010. The music just isn't there.

[The Everlasting Dave]

There are zero albums and two songs on my own "Best of 2010" list. At #2 we have Katy Perry and Snoop Dogg's "California Gurls", and at #1 we have Locksley's "Slink (A Hymn)", aka the theme from "The Good Guys". I don't think I heard any other new music this year that I enjoyed.

[Dorian]

Hope you read this. Put more thought into your "critics," it seems like you are making stuff up to please your readers. Coldplay is an excellent band, and your two reasons why they "suck" (boring songs and ice-cream) are just pitiful. Coldplay was made famous by thei soft quite, sad, and beautiful songs like Sparks and Don't Panic. You're list of top tens is pretty dull anyways just like your taste in music.

On a friendlier note: do you like Thirteen Senses?

[The Everlasting Dave]

If you like Coldplay you don't get to call anyone else's taste in music dull. Think before you type.

[Geds]

So, wait, let me get this straight. I'm not allowed to criticize Coldplay based on the fact that they're boring. But you're allowed to criticize my music based on the fact that it's dull?

That seems highly suspect and a bit double-standardish to me.

[Dorian]

Yes.

[Geds]

Please attempt to approach a point. Otherwise I'll have to tell you to go away to please my readers. Who obviously still care about this post I wrote nine months ago and would have totally forgotten about were I not the number two Google hit for "Coldplay sucks."

Also, speaking of, I've been in that position for a while. And I wrote this post back in January. This is the first time that Coldplay's legion of adoring fan has seen fit to attempt to defend them. Just thought I'd point that out.

[Ry]

I have to disagree with this. Your reasoning is a little ridiculous.
One reason: their songs are too long? Huh... I wasn't aware that lenth had to do with substance.
Your attempt to insult Coldplay while making yourself sound so smart is strange, since you have technically no valid reasons, in my opinion. Coldplay's song title, "The Scientist", having nothing to do with science, doesn't matter. You could probably name fifty songs that had nothing to do with their titles. Maybe the artist had a different reason that wasn't plainly spelled out in the song. You can't expect all artists to do that, you know.
You could call me stupid for believing that Coldplay's songs actually do have a beautiful meaning to the lyrics, but I could say the exact same thing to you. It's OPINIONS. Whatever YOU find beautiful, and whatever YOU can relate to is what makes a song meaningful. Length (seriously, come on), beat, instruments, and everything else you argued against has absolutely nothing to do with the true meaning of the song.
Lastly, having a lot of money does not make someone suck. You think that the lead singer of U2 isn't rolling around in money? Of course he is. Those that love the bands give them money because they appreciate their work. That's just how it goes, and you'll just have to live with it.

[Geds]

Yes. You got me there, what with your amazingly excellent reading comprehension. Because I absolutely did not, at any point in that post, say that Oasis's seven-minute long "Fade In-Out" was an amazing song. That totally didn't happen. So my only complaint about the five minute "The Scientist" was obviously that it was "too long." Not that it was boring as fuck.

See, here's the funny thing about music: the best songs are exactly as long as they need to be. If a song needs to be nine minutes long to be good, it can be a good song at nine minutes. If a song only needs to be three minutes long but is nine minutes long, then it is "too long." I like to call songs like that "Led Zeppelin songs." Seriously. "Cashmere" is awesome. Until it gets boring and then keeps going for another twelve minutes or so. But that was the '70s.

Anyway, by my definition, any song by Coldplay that's longer than, say, thirty seconds, is too long. And any song by Coldplay that I have to listen to for more than, say, ten seconds. Which is why I said this: "But 'The Scientist' never really goes anywhere, either. And while it’s two minutes shorter than “Fade In-Out,” it’s an interminable five minutes."

So, please, feel free to come back when you learn how to read.

Or, y'know, don't. That would probably be better for everyone, SINCE I WROTE THIS FUCKING POST ALMOST A YEAR AGO.

[Ry]

And I do hope you reply to this. I'd love to hear what you think